Saturday - Tel Aviv

So on Saturday we had a "free" day in Tel Aviv with no plans and as such, most of us slept in a lot. The hostel, Dizengoff Beach Apartments, was really nice and had a separate room with a double bed and then a foldout couch in the living room. And a nice big bathroom. The only bad thing was that the wifi was slow, weak, and unreliable. Oh yeah, and our shower curtain wasn't big enough to extend all the way around the bathtub so water would either get all over the floor near the door or all over the floor near the window. And the bathroom didn't have a little drain on the floor either so the tile just had to stay wet. It did have air conditioning, so I was super thankful for that because it was really hot.

We went to this one place that my book recommended called Benedict, a 24 hour breakfast place! Breakfast is my favorite meal by far. The wait was pretty long, like 8 parties ahead of us, but it went quick. The menu also seemed kind of expensive, but it was so worth it. The eggs benedict that I had came with my choice of drink, which included a champagne cocktail as one of the possibilities! So I definitely got that.

After that we went on another adventure to find an ice cream place also recommended in my book. We went into central Tel Aviv and found the place, which was called Iceberg. The employees there were super nice an patient with us, even when one of us accidentally threw a dirty tasting spoon into the whole bowl of clean ones, the employee said no problem and just replaced the whole bowl. When one of the customers had brought a dog in from the heat, one of the other employees got a bowl of water and gave it to the dog! A++ for service; the ice cream was pretty good, too.

Then a few of us went walking along the beach, meandering our way back up to where our hostel was. We saw a nice marina and some sailboats and lots of people at the beach. We stopped at a nice little cafe and had some drinks and watched the Mediterranean Sea for a while. I had a Tuborg, which I thought was pretty good.

When we walked further up the boardwalk to the Tel Aviv port, we saw this street entertainer who was doing Chinese yo-yo! I was pretty shocked to see that and he wasn't all that great, either. Richard wondered if the crowd even knew it was a Chinese thing (he was talking in Hebrew so we couldn't tell what he was saying to the crowd.

For dinner that night we went to another late night favorite that my book suggested, a place called Moses' Burger Station. We had some great burgers, although it didn't seem like they really understood medium-rare. It was either going to be medium or it was going to be rare. I tried to tell the guy I wanted medium-rare and he seemed to understand, but it definitely came out on the rare side.

Later, after dinner, we walked down to this hummus place that was supposed to be really good and 6 of us shared a bowl of hummus while 2 others got a bowl each. The hummus was pretty darn tasty and when we ordered another pita, the owner dude walked by and non-chalantly tossed the pita from his standing hand height all the way to our wooden bowl on the table, making a loud "wham!" on the table and sending Richard into a bout of laughter at how indifferently the guy delivered the pita.

That's all the adventures for Saturday. I'll try to get Sunday and Monday up tomorrow so I can start catching up!

Friday

So Friday we woke up a lot earlier than we usually had done and had breakfast around 7. I noticed that there were a lot more people there than there were at our usual 8am. I figured we like to sleep in but probably most other people like to get early starts. Maybe they were saying to themselves, "those lazy Americans finally woke up early". In any case we got a decently early start and checked out of the hostel and started the drive to the Dead Sea.

Once we got to the Dead Sea everyone jumped into the water in pure joy! Just kidding. You're actually not supposed to dive in or dunk your head or anything but float on your back, really. So you wade in past these rocks covered with salt (even underwater) and then sort of lie down on your back. We had a couple people who weren't going in take a bunch of pictures and videos for us. I have to say that at first I wasn't too psyched for the Dead Sea but it was pretty cool to experience once. Floating takes zero effort. It actually takes much more effort to try and keep your head up and sit up because everything tries to float including your legs and feet! So that was pretty neat for about ten minutes. Then I wanted to get out and then the bad aspects of the Dead Sea kicked in. Any part that was sunburned or had a cut started to burn as soon as I got out of the water. It was a good thing they had a fresh water shower right outside next to the water! After I rinsed off I took some more pictures and them went to the bathroom to change. Unfortunately for me, the bathrooms with showers and changing rooms cost 2 shekels to go in! Ridiculous! And because I had just brought my swimming trunks (rather than wearing them on the drive) the dip in the Dead Sea cost me 4 shekels. Like someone on the China tour a few years ago used to say, it's cheaper than a plane ticket back!

We ate lunch at this little restaurant/buffet right on the Dead Sea, which, I have to say, definitely exceeded my expectations! I had some slow cooked chicken and some salad.

Then we drove off to Masada, which is a fortress that was built up primarily under Herod (do you see a running theme here?) and is quite amazing. It's at the top of this huge mountain an has two or three aqueducts feeding into big cisterns for the water supply from nearby mountains. It also had three courtyards on the northern side for Herod himself (the top one) and for entertaining guests (the lower two). But things like that aren't enough for Herod, he had to go and put a big swimming pool up on top, too. It was so big that we had trouble exploring the whole site in an hour and a half.

There are two ways to the actual Masada mountain where the ruins are. One is by a tram that takes you up via cable car. The other is called the snake trail and, like its namesake, is a very winding trail all the way down. It's supposed to take about an hour going down and maybe twice that going up. But when we got there (around 1pm-ish) the staff told us it was too hot an they weren't letting anyone go up, only come down. So we took the tram up and I tried to explore the whole thing and ended up having to really book it to one end to see the views, but I got there so I was glad. After that we hiked down in about 40 minutes and man that was pretty tough going on my knees. Thankfully most of the way the trail is fairly wide and has railings. At the bottom everyone was tire and hot so we all got ice cream (Magnum bars!) even though they were pretty expensive compared to ones we've sen at convenience stores.

In fact, Magnum bars have become our de facto standard for determining how expensive ant given store is. "Ooh the Magnum bars are only 10 shekels here". Or "man what the heck they're 15 shekels at this place!"

After Masada we had a fairly long drive through the desert to get to our next stop, Tel Aviv. Once we got there and checked into the hostel and settled on we set off to find some good eats. We ended up at this place near our hostel called Jeremiah's, which was quite good. They were even playing American music the whole time we were there. Although it was pretty eclectic collection, cause I was the only one who knew what half the songs were.

After that we decided to get our laundry done even though it was getting late (almost 11ish?). There was a laundromat across the street that was open 24 hours, so we put our loads in and then walked around for a bit. Tel Aviv is a pretty cosmopolitan city and the area was actually livening up even more after 11. There was a young guy waiting at the crosswalk with us who asked where we were from in really good English. Turns out he was from LA but was in Israel for the time being doing his military service. He was training to be a paratrooper and said soon they all had to do a 75km hike with all their gear and stuff. Crazy! That's like 45 miles!

So after we were done with the wash and waiting for the drying to finish we were just hanging around outside the laundromat and started playing this game where you have a riddle and can only ask yes/no questions and you try to figure it out. It was fun for a while, but I had forgotten most of my good lateral thinking problems (someone remind me to look them up when I get home). Then we were all pretty tired so we went to bed. End of Friday!

Thursday - Shephela

So on Thursday we drove through the hills of western Israel that are between the plains areas and the mountains, also known as the shephela (which means lowlands). First we stopped near Aijalon, at a place called the Corinne of the Knights. I think it was a crusader fort. It is near the famous fort of Latrun where three battles were fought during Israel's war for independence. This area of the Shephela is important because it is the "front door" to Jerusalem. Once you take this strategic point, you can move right up into the mountains and straight on to Jerusalem.

After that we went to a Tel (which just means man-made hill because a city or fortification was destroyed and rebuilt so many times) near the Sorek Valley which overlooks Timnah and read Judges 14, the early years of Samson. It was cool to see the places that Samson went and killed a bunch of Philistines and totally destroyed their crops like in Judges 15. It was really cool because the actual wheat harvest had just been taken and so it made that passage that much more real.

After that we went to Tel Azekah, which overlooks the Elah Valley, and read through the David and Goliath story in 1 Samuel 17 and imagined the battle unfolding and thinking about where the people were and everything. Cool to see the actual places where these things happened.

Going back to Jerusalem that evening we ran into so much traffic and we also had a bunch of wrong turns. Craziness of Israeli drivers, case in point: we went into a parking lot that was very full with only one entrance and some cars parked along the way in/out, so there was space for only one car. The only problem? We couldn't get out because other cars kept trying to come in but nobody could turn around because all of the spaces were blocked. I felt like I was in that game Gridlock where you have to move the cars around to get the one out. And THEN, the car just behind us pulls over and PARKS in the traffic lane and the guy just gets out of his car to sit there and wait. You're not doing the rest of us any favors, buddy! So finally one of our guys got out and had to try and direct cars I back out and move all around until we could finally get out. 20+ minutes gone because of one wrong turn and a buildup of cars.

So we finally get back and want to have dinner but by this time the only places that are open are in West Jerusalem (much more liberal than the Old City). So we walk a half hour to get there and go to a restaurant Aaron recommends. I got this dish called shakshouqa which was really delicious - eggs poached in stewed tomatoes and sauce with some onions and cheese and stuff on top. Yum.

After that we went off to find the hot chocolate place that also sold Belgian waffles. I had a hot chocolate and a Belgian waffle with butterscotch on it. The waffle was really good and at first I thought the hot chocolate was just ok but then I realized as it was cooling down that it was a lot better than I originally thought. It didn't have a much mouth coating chocolate and wasn't nauseatingly rich like Burdick's but it went down smooth and still was awesomely chocolatey. Also, the people at that place seemed really nice.

Unfortunately, by the time all this happened it was like 10.15 and the convent/hostel where we are staying has an 11pm curfew. So we high tailed it back to the Old City and our hostel and got there around 10.45. But then nobody answered the doorbell for a little while so I was kinda scared that we had been locked out. But then the door opened for us and we were fine. But then because it was such a long day we had to have a discussion about what to cut from the next day that was supposed to have been another long day. Man, that made it even longer of a day and I was pretty exhausted already. We decided to try and get an early start and finish the discussion in the morning.

Pics for your enjoyment

trying it out for now

eggs benedict with bacon at this awesome restaurant called benedict - open 24/7!

One more thing

That last one was really long, sorry bout that. Here's a more fun one that requires participation. I will reveal the answer in a while.

So yesterday I shaved, but not my entire face. Which part(s) do you think I shaved and which part(s) do you think I left?

Wednesday - Bethlehem and Herodian and Wadi Qelt

So I think I need to start catching up on my posts. I believe I left off on Tuesday. So on Wednesday the 25th we headed into the West Bank. That was certainly an experience in and of itself going through the checkpoint but not a big deal overall. Once they saw we were American tourists they waved us through.

We parked not far from the checkpoint and walked a ways in the hot sun along roads until we got to Manger Square. The Church of the Nativity is right there - supposedly the oldest church on the planet, built by Constantine. At the entrance is a really small door that you have to stoop down to enter. Legend has it that this forces everyone who enters the church to humble themselves, but Pastor Aaron said that it's more likely that it was for defensive reasons. The inside was pretty nice looking and had some nice mosaics and paintings on the floor and columns. The worst part was waiting in this line that was not very well organized. We were going under the church to this little cave where Jesus was thought to have been born which was closed when we got there for a monk service. We were standing in front of this one tour group from what sounded like Eastern Europe somewhere and they were very pushy and kept trying to push us forward even though nobody had any room. Finally one of the guys in our group made a joke about eating beans and having personal space to which a few of us laughed out loud. This actually caused a huge commotion because the Palestinian authority dude standing near the line yelled at us and told us not to laugh because it was a holy place. I found this pretty interesting. It's a holy place and yet everyone around there seemed to not be treating other people with respect. I talked to Aaron about it and he said that Eastern European religious culture focuses on objects and places in their worship a lot, which is very different from the way we do things. To me the little cave under the church is a cool historical place to see but ultimately it's just a cave. But it seemed as though it was a lot more to the other tour group - something to help them become closer to God. I don't know if that is sinful or which way is the "right" way, but I do know that people should treat each other with respect and understanding. Of course, maybe in their country being pushy and having no personal space is completely normal. So I guess I'll extend some grace to them, too. We all got to see the cave in the end.

After that we went to a place called the Herodian, which was a palace and fortress for King Herod the Great, who is known for his egomania and massive building projects. The name probably sounds familiar because he was the Roman governor in Israel when Jesus was born. It was cool to see this palace fortress and the great views of the whole region. We could see from this vantage point the different ridge routes and that you could farm in the valleys on the western side of the Dead Sea but the hills were only good for shepherding.

After that we left the West Bank and drove through some wilderness (more like desert) parts of Israel and came to a neat place called the Wadi Qelt. This is a small valley where all the water flows when it rains so it's literally a strip of oasis with trees and stuff amidst the desert. We hiked down a ways and looked at it from the desert and then read Psalm 23. Powerful stuff, especially in the desert wilderness.

That evening we went again to the Western Wall but this time we were going to see the tunnels they had excavated underneath the wall, down to where the original walkway was. Apparently the Temple Mount was built high up in the mountain top but then when Jerusalem was destroyed and rebuilt they built top of the old stuff with arches so the wall looks a lot less tall now than it originally did. Our tour guide was really cool and funny. And there was the best moving model of the Temple Mount that he used to explain where we were and where that would have been historically. A couple of highlights: getting my picture with these first century paving stones that when they excavated they found them sitting there near the end of the pavement as if a war had started and they were just left there and the pavement was left unfinished. Also when the guide was explaining how they found one of the original entrances that the priests used to walk up to the Temple Mount and someone asked why they didn't reopen it (since it was filled with stone now), he said "we could break it down but the Arabs would come". Funny stuff.

Long days

Hey everyone,

Sorry for not posting yesterday or today but we had super long days driving around an seeing various things in the surrounding areas near Jerusalem. I will hopefully post at least part of what we did tomorrow. But fear not! I am keeping a small, detailed journal of all the things we are doing and seeing and will fill you in accordingly. Just as a small taste of things to come, tonight after dinner I went to a place that is advertised as the best hot chocolate in Israel (and possibly the world). Was it better than the hot chocolate place in Harvard square (whose name escapes me at the moment)? Do you even like the hot chocolate at that place (I don't I think it's too thick)? I think it starts with a "b". Discuss!

Will